“Gohan, listen closely. You have the potential to become the most powerful being on earth. You need to believe in yourself, and unleashed that power! It’s do or die time. So, draw all your strength and use it to protect your world, and everyone in it!”
– Piccolo
Year released: Jun. 11th 2022
Dragon Ball Super: Superheroes is a bit of a twist on the usual format for my reviews. Generally, I’ve covered mainly western products, but I figured ‘tis the season of giving so let’s give! The film was the second to come out with the “Super” moniker as it follows after Dragon Ball Super: Broly. Unlike all previous films, the studio took the approach of doing a full heavily stylized 3D model production over largely 2D. The reason may have been due to the main villain of the movie sporting spots all over his body and any 2D animator will tell you that details like those are a tedious pain to deal with. There was a lot of backlash when the movie was first teased as the anime community has had a mixed view on CGI elements in their media. This would generally change after the film’s release, but there are still pro-2D consumers going strong despite the successful film.
Original story creator, Akira Toriyama granted us with a unique change to the usual format in which the “Super” series and movies have followed for some time. Gohan is once again the protagonist, along with Piccolo and the aforementioned’s daughter, Pan. The movie itself deals with the Red Ribbon army, an almost defunct group which bolstered military might during the early days of Goku before he wiped most of them out. The current head of the group, Magenta, is the son of the former head, Red, and his plan was to bring the army back to its glory days while getting rid of Goku and friends. With this new goal, they hired the grandson of the infamous Dr. Gero, Dr. Hedo to make powerful androids.
Dr. Hedo was misled into believing that the RR Army were actually the good guys, so he sends his 2 new Androids, styled as Superheroes, to bring justice to the “villainous” group led by Goku. Unfortunately, Goku and Vegeta are off-world training at this time and the only ones strong enough are Piccolo and Gohan, with Gohan focusing on work more than his family as of late. I won’t detail more of the movie, but for those who’ve seen it, you already know how it ramps up. As Gohan is my favorite character, I was jumping for joy to see him back in action with the focus being on him. Hopefully this means his character will be respected in the future of the series.
-By Jamarri Taylor